DOH holds international disease summit

Staff writer, with CNA

Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta, third left, wearing a pilot’s uniform, and women dressed as flight attendants take part in an event at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday to encourage people traveling abroad to be careful about buying medicine.

Photo: Yao Chieh-hsiu, Taipei Times

Department of Health (DOH) Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) yesterday expressed Taiwan’s determination to combat cancer and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) at an international conference attended by a number of health experts from Europe and the US.

Citing a goal adopted by the World Health Assembly to reduce NCD mortality by 25 percent worldwide before 2025, Chiu said Taiwan was stepping up its pursuit of the goal by hosting this week’s 2012 Taiwan--Europe Health Dialogue.

“We are working to integrate Taiwan’s NCD control efforts to overcome the challenges of an -ageing society,” Chiu said in his opening speech.

With NCDs accounting for about 80 percent of deaths in Taiwan, Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞), -director-general of the department’s Bureau of Health Promotion, said she expected the conference to be highly beneficial to the country.

The conference, the first of its kind to be held in Taiwan, will help domestic health experts advance their knowledge of how Europe and the US tackle NCDs such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases, she said.

Taiwan has actively participated in recent years in the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG), a health policy event that takes place annually in the EU.

“This time, we have brought a team of European experts to Taiwan to facilitate an exchange of opinions,” she said.

The European experts attending the forum include EHFG president and founder Gunther Leiner, Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region president Helmut Brand and a number of health experts from the US.

The two-day meeting, themed “Promoting Population Health in an NCD Era,” is being held at National Taiwan University in Taipei and started yesterday.

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